She was there at the very beginning, hired by the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 1979 to help find another use for St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights, a small parish with a historic past where she oversaw the restoration of its stained-glass windows and began to develop arts programming.

She has been there ever since as artistic director, steadily building the institution into a renowned performing arts center that presents productions from all over the world — like the National Theater of Scotland’s “Black Watch” and the Irish play “Misterman” — shepherding the theater from one temporary location to another.

And now on Tuesday, Ms. Feldman will unveil St. Ann’s first permanent home, having overseen a hard-earned renovation of the Tobacco Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

“I feel like we’re finishing the job I started 36 years ago,” Ms. Feldman said, sitting in the industrial, hip new 320-seat theater during a recent interview.

After a series of opening events, the season starts with an all-female “Henry IV,” set against the backdrop of women in prison, a production with the Donmar Warehouse of London directed by Phyllida Lloyd — the kind of bold fare that has been a staple of St. Ann’s programming.

Next up will be “The Last Hotel,” a new opera by Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh; “Labapalooza!,” from St. Ann’s puppet lab; “Nice Fish,” which Mark Rylance stars in and wrote with the poet Louis Jenkins; “A Streetcar Named Desire,” featuring Gillian Anderson; and “Bianco,” a circus from Wales, which will erect its tent under the Brooklyn Bridge.

With a mop of curly hair and an easygoing warmth, Ms. Feldman, 66, doesn’t immediately come across as a theater maverick. Indeed, she essentially backed into the arts. Having grown up in the countercultural 1960s, she started out working in alternative education programs after graduating from New York University’s uptown campus in the Bronx.

In her therapeutic work with former criminals and addicts, Ms. Feldman started using plays and music, which led her toward the arts. Then she started working with Gene Frankel, the director and acting teacher and, in finding new space for him, connected with the conservancy, which enlisted her as a consultant for St. Ann Church.

“When I walked into St. Ann’s, something clicked for me,” she said. “It was the perfect combination of history, culture, beauty and inspiration.”

As she thought about new uses for St. Ann’s, Ms. Feldman consulted with two theater experts — Harvey Lichtenstein at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Joseph Papp of the Public Theater — both of whom encouraged her to develop arts programming in the church.

Artists who have worked with her say that Ms. Feldman has developed a fierce doggedness with which she travels the globe, bringing back daring work.

“She responds right from the guts,” Ms. Lloyd said. “It’s not about: ‘Is this a star vehicle? Is it commercial?’ It’s just about, ‘Is this going to change lives?’ ”

St. Ann’s operations are modest compared with other major New York arts institutions — its annual budget is $3.5 million and will grow only slightly in the new building to $5 million, because of increased operating staff and programming. (The theater, which used to present from October to May, can now do so year-round; “We have air conditioning,” Ms. Feldman said, triumphantly).

The cost of the renovation was also relatively low: $31.6 million, about $16 million of which came from the city. Tom Finkelpearl, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, said that it was money well spent.

“The thing at St. Ann’s that’s been lacking is long-term continuity in one space,” Mr. Finkelpearl said. “They’ve landed in a perfect place that fits in terms of the cultural life of Brooklyn. The many different ways it can be configured is really important — this is going to be able to have small, medium and large events.”

The pliancy of the space was essential to Ms. Feldman — keeping the Civil War-era warehouse wide open, using curtains to adjust the stage into different shapes and sizes. “We wanted to recreate that same flexibility that seemed to be the thing that made St. Ann’s useful for the last 36 years in New York,” Ms. Feldman said.

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In renovating the Tobacco Warehouse, the challenge was to preserve the 1850s brick walls and create a "flexible, enclosed 21st-century performance machine," the architect Jonathan Marvel said.CreditAlex Welsh for The New York Times

This amounted to a tough mandate for the architect, Jonathan Marvel. “It takes a very special designer to not design,” Ms. Feldman said.

Mr. Marvel also had to contend with St. Ann’s interest in preserving the 1850s brick walls. “The primary challenge,” Mr. Marvel said, was “how to be respectful of that inspired 19th-century artifact and create a flexible, enclosed 21st-century performance machine.”

For Ms. Feldman, the surroundings have fed the work — whether it was the Brooklyn Heights church or the other two buildings St. Ann’s has occupied. “I always loved this idea of taking spaces that had their own character and using them as theaters,” she said.

In 2000, the organization left the church to go out on its own, moving into a temporary rent-free space at 38 Water Street, where St. Ann’s Warehouse theater opened in 2001.

“We were only going to be there for nine months,” Ms. Feldman said. “We stayed 12½ years.”

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The new home of St. Ann's Warehouse.CreditAlex Welsh for The New York Times

In 2011, despite having won the right to build in the Tobacco Warehouse at 45 Water Street, St. Ann’s was stymied by a federal-court case in which a few preservation and community organizations contested a decision by the National Park Service to remove the Tobacco Warehouse from classification as federally designated parkland and allow it to be developed. “I know everyone is fighting for what they believe in,” Ms. Feldman said at the time. “We’re just heartbroken. And a little desperate.”

So St. Ann’s signed a three-year lease for an interim space at 29 Jay Street, moving there in June 2012, where it remained during the Tobacco Warehouse renovation.

Artists say they are looking forward to bringing their projects to St. Ann’s new home. “I would just hope to work there as often as I can,” said Mr. Rylance, whose play opens in February. “It’s one of those theaters that has a family feel.”

Ms. Feldman hopes to maintain that feel — by offering snacks at a concession operated by the popular Brooklyn restaurant Vinegar Hill House, turning the adjacent triangular portion of the warehouse into a park and renting out space for community events. The building turned out just as she had hoped.

“It’s like a life accomplishment,” she said. “You look back on it and say, ‘So this is what your life was,’ and that’s a great feeling, but kind of a poignant feeling, as well.”

“If I want to know what I’ve done for the last 36 years,” she added, “this is what I’ve done.”

Correction:Oct. 7, 2015

An article on Monday about St. Ann’s Warehouse, the performing arts organization that is moving into its first permanent home, in Brooklyn, and its artistic director, Susan Feldman, misidentified, at one point, the organization that hired Ms. Feldman in 1979 to help find another use for St. Ann and Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. As the article correctly noted elsewhere, it is the New York Landmarks Conservancy, not the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The article also misidentified the first production of the season. It is an all-female “Henry IV” — a hybrid of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Henry IV, Part 2” — not “Henry V.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Housewarming at Long Last. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe